


Escape from Planet Neptune

by Syberina5



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Documentary, F/F, F/M, Film Noir, M/M, dark side of Hollywood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2019-12-30 17:52:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18320294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syberina5/pseuds/Syberina5
Summary: Disclaimer: This is not the escape from planet Neptune AU you just realized you were always looking for. For serious. Like. Read the summary.Summary:Once childhood stars of the frequently malignedPlanet Neptune, America’s sweetheart turned porn-flop and bad boy turned badder, Veronica and Logan Echolls (LoVE to their few remaining fans) are said to be reuniting—on screen if not at the alter—for what is being sold as the definitive tell-all about what happened behind the scenes of the show that led from instant fame to meth, mayhem, and murder. We’d like to act like we’re above such rubbernecking, but—just like every other train wreck to come fromPlanet Neptune—we won’t be able to look away. The only question we want answered is how broke did they have to be to finally agree to this?Author’s Note: When you wait, shivering, on a bus bench for long enough anything seems legitimate to your brain: digging through the trash can, taking a nap, making faces at passing cars, talking to yourself, disturbing reality bends that make everything about Neptune even worse. I’m not usually a big fan of stuffthisAU, but [shrugs] it was born nearly fully formed in my brain, so [shrugs].





	1. Kharma is a b!tch

[](https://ibb.co/x3j7sZ3)

There will be some social-media-esque opportunities for you—or your AU character counterpart—to become part of the story. In the comments section feel free to reply to as though this were a twitter, tumblr, Snap, ‘gram, what have you. You may find LoVE and company reading them or even responding. Have fun!


	2. Look what you’ve done.

Veronica would never have agreed to it if Logan hadn’t first. Or if there had been any dirty laundry left to air but nope, over the years the shitty Hollywood system, the fake friends, and the paps had gotten the worst of her recorded for posterity. Thanks, Universe, you’re a pal!

_Shit._

***

Logan would have never agreed to it if Veronica already had. He’d been so sure she’d refuse, that she would take her now constant stance of giving the finger to anything Hollywood and anybody who called her Veronica Echolls—and why the world seemed so determined to hold on to one throw away interview clip about their impending nuptials that had been so kitschy it had to be an act he’d never understand—and call her trusty sidekick to mount another injunction against the action and any mention other than that she refused to be interviewed. Which would of course make the entire documentary pointless and hence let Logan off the hook without being the bad guy to one of the friends he didn’t really think would fork him over to the _National Enquirer_.

Now, they were both fucked.

***

At first, every project is just a concept that without the right backing, money, and people lining up behind it will die a predictable death in the over-crowded graveyard of Hollywood. The number of documentaries, dramatizations, and fictionalizations of the _Planet Neptune_ saga to wither away such was also high to say nothing of those that made it a little bit further only to be miserable enough to whimper before they were forgotten. The _Tinseltown Diaries_ episode was the most successful though there were several podcast episodes out in the internet ether to espouse more salacious, unverified sets of events. And that was saying something. TE!’s lawyers were hardly likely to let them air something as often as they had aired the _Planet Neptune_ episode without making sure they wouldn’t get sued and have to return such a high amount of revenue and it was still dripping with enough sex, lies, and video tape to bring new meaning to the term. Star-hungry podcasters who couldn’t keep themselves warm in San Fran rubbing together the money they made on their dirt had no such qualms or concerns. 

Sometimes though—through a confluence of nigh-magical events—a project actually comes to fruition even when all the usual claptrap should stop it. 

***

“No.”

“Come on, V. It’s just talking into a camera,” Wallace reasoned. “You did that for like ten of your formative years. This will be a walk in the park.”

“No.”

“You don’t even have to memorize any lines; you just say the truth and,” he leaned over into her face, “you know how you feel about the truth.”

“It’s not like that, Papa Bear.” She folded up her—Wallace’s—newspaper and tapped him on the head with it as she went to transfer her coffee into a travel mug. The best way to be when Wally-Fee had a bee in his bonnet was to be gone. He’d pestered Veronica before to tell her side of the story: “Get it out of you, Veronica. Exorcise the fucking demon and move on with the rest of the world.”

He didn’t understand Hollywood well enough, that _Neptune_ was an albatross around her neck, and that giving anyone that was part of it another go at her would only eat more of her alive. 

“Later Wallace,” she said giving him a peck on his cheek the way she’d done to her parents so many years before. 

“Uh huh. So what is it today? Stakeout? Door-to-door interviews? Cosplay?”

“Oh, all of the above, oh master. All of the above.”

She breathed easier outside their apartment even if the sunshine didn’t necessarily penetrate her bones. Wallace had always given up before. Granted never before had he gone on for so long or been pals with the person asking. It wasn’t a good sign. 

***

The look on Mac’s face told Logan a lot: 

1\. She was uncomfortable asking, probably because she knew this kind of thing reeked of the fake friendships that his life had been plagued by.  
2\. She knew this could cost them their relationship—such as it was.   
3\. She knew Logan hated to talk about every topic she was asking him to talk about. 

“Look, Logan, you like to pretend that these things didn’t happen to you unless you can make some grim joke and show everyone you’re above it, which I get. But, when it’s your turn to share in meetings, you aren’t really sharing. I… Logan, there’s a reason this sharing thing is part of the program. You need to do or you’ll relapse.”

“Statistics say I’ll relapse anyway, Mac.” He flipped a page in one of the glossy magazines she kept around for her graphics work.

“Stop it,” she pulled it from his hands. “As your ridiculously gorgeous sponsor, I demand you come out from behind the death wish because I hate it when I have to replace shoes you vomited on.”

He smiled at her. This was why she was his sponsor, why they worked even when he kept the wall between the world and his past as wide and labyrinthine as he could manage. If he could get lost there himself without falling off the wagon he would. 

***

“So, why are you here?”

“To support my friend.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s my friend,” he said matter-of-factly. “V’s been through some pretty awful things, and she doesn’t think that people will be there to support her even in talking about them because… well, people didn’t. All this stuff happened to her, and… she was alone. She didn’t deserve that. And I’m not that kind of friend, and if you’re asking me that question I’ve got to wonder: are you the kind of friend who _wouldn’t_ support your friend when things get rough? ‘Cause that’s weak.”

“You’re a good friend.”

“If you don’t have a friend like me you should go shopping. And not just for like clothes and stuff. Friends. Get you some new friends.”


	3. Give to me your leather.

Logan had seen it more times than he cared to admit even to himself—though with AA he could admit those memories were some of the ones he’d tried to drown. Aaron and his mom would be fighting. One or both of them would be drunk, usually his mom, and Aaron would spurn her, shove her, slap her. There was something distinctive about the crack of Aaron’s hand against Lynn’s cheek, something about the sound that, even though Logan had heard dozens or even hundreds of slaps, was always different. No sound tech in the world could match it. 

As such, Logan needed no help imagining the day she fell. 

***

It was more annoying now.

Everything was more annoying now but especially the fawning and pawing of hair and makeup. She had to repress the urge to shove, run, hell even bat them away. 

Again she wondered why she’d agreed to this.

Oh yeah, Wallace.

The fluttering and picking and buzzing had hit what felt like fever pitch and she was about to hit the roof when suddenly the interviewer—a young woman Veronica had never seen before—came in and the tech messing with the body mic and the hair comb trying to make it look like she didn’t have flyaways had nearly evaporated and she was in a comfy chair looking at a placid, generic, white female face nestled next to the camera. She knew there was another one—objectively—to the side getting a profile shot because it had been in the contract and her manager made sure she knew every thing the director could pull (say what you will but for Veronica preparedness was next to godliness).

She sat, looking at the camera trying to mirror the bland passivity of the face before her.

“How long has it been since you last saw your ex husband?” came out of left field and left Veronica fumbling.

“Logan? Um,” she scratched her forehead. She was not expecting the deep end. “We’ve probably crossed paths at a function or something, I don’t…”

“No, really saw him, talked to him, did more than nod across a room?”

“Oh, um… I guess when…. I was sick; he came to visit, to see how I was.” She was starting to find her feet, but she was having trouble not rally remembering.

“Visit? Visit you where?

“The hospital,” she said with a wave, her brain screaming _Distract, distract, be casual!_

“You were admitted to the hospital?”

“Yeah.”

“So he came to see you after Hayward Meyer attacked you.”

“Yeah… I guess that would have been when, yeah.”

“So he still cared at that point?”

“Cared that I was recovering?” She may not have had _Fans_ any more but she still had friends. “Lots of people cared; he’s not a monster.”

“Yeah, but how many of the people that you’ve known personally since you were a child came to see you in the hospital? Couldn’t he have just listened to the news, called to see if you were labeled as stable?” The interviewer’s tone—and it rankled that Veronica didn’t know the woman’s name—was matter of fact, not cold, not emotional or confrontational. Bland just like the rest of her.

“I guess, sure, but he’d always needed visual confirmation, you know? Like, he kind of thought we were making it up when we said Laurel Bannon was joining the cast and no amount of publicity could truly make him believe it until she was standing in front of him.”

“Is he always like that?”

“Yeah,” and then she processed how long it had been since she watched Logan do a visual assessment of his friends to account for their health before relaxing. “Well, he used to be, when we were kids.”

“So did he need visual confirmation that Lilly was dead?”

She saw the look on his face swim before her eyes and nodded. “It was everywhere though. The paps had pictures of the body before the cops did—fucking vultures perched in our goddamned trees.”

“Do you think that photographer is telling the truth about calling it in?”

She shrugged, what did it matter? Lilly was dead and alone. “How long did that sicko sit in that tree and take pictures before he did it, that’s what I want to know. Did he call an ambulance or his editor first?”

“You keep saying he.”

“It was a male voice. On the tape of the 911 call.”

“You’ve heard it?”

“I’ve heard, read, memorized just about every word, every picture, every time stamp I can find for Lilly’s murder.”

“Why?”

“Because I couldn’t let them get away with it.”

“Who? With what?” Veronica knew the answer as well as she knew that she was forgetting what little guard she’d had at the start of the interview.

“Even then, even with everything falling apart around us I knew this Able Koontz, Stalker business didn’t add up. But I didn’t know what I was doing. All I’d ever learned about investigating a murder I learned from _Murder She Wrote, Planet Neptune_ , and that one episode of _CSI_ I was on.”

“Is that why you got back in touch with your birth father?”

“It wasn’t like that! You— I l—” she put her head in her palm and shook it while exhaling all the oxygen she could spare. “Gah, I forgot how hard this was.”

“What,” the interviewer—Jasmine? Jesse? Geraldinia? They’d clearly given her someone she had no impression of so she’d be less likely to balk at the questions—said.

Veronica looked at her questioningly.

“You said you ‘forgot how hard this was.’ What is it that has been hard? Talking about your past?”

She shook her head again. Damn it, mics had gotten stronger or her voice had gotten louder. “Being interviewed. Being _good_ at being interviewed. Showing yourself just enough to be seen as real and interesting but not actually giving up pieces of yourself because if you do you’re dead, you vanish. You have to be in character, a character who is just ever so slightly different from you. It’s hard. And part of me is trying to be that old character, Almost Ronnie Mars or Very Close To Veronica Echolls but they are nowhere near who I am now. I don’t have a Basically Veronica Mars in my repertoire.”

“So why not be Actually Veronica Mars?” 

“Say I do that and this documentary actually gets seen by more than Mac’s twenty closest loved ones and they start buying ad space to call me a murdering slut again, to tell my mom she should have had an abortion because then Aaron and Lilly could be alive and perfectly in love.” She gagged a little bit remembering that all too bile worthy day. “All of that is about Actually Veronica Mars? That doesn’t go in a box so easily. Lilly taught me that. ‘They can hate who they see, Veronica Mars, but if they can’t see you they hate a mirage.’” She smiled. “She was so full of bullshit like that, but she wasn’t wrong.” Faces swam in front of Veronica again, her old tormentors. “Some of Lilly’s lessons I had to learn the hard way. When the tapes came out, Ronnie Mars got lit on fire by people who were supposed to be her friends—my friends, my ‘Hollywood Family.’ Ha. They warmed themselves off the flames.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

“Even Logan?”

She nodded, seeing his eyes when they hated her. “For a while.”

“What changed?”

“He remembered that believing any three words in a row out of Aaron’s mouth was a terrible idea.” She sighed. “He also remembered some of the parties where other people were claiming to have had similar experiences; he’s not an idiot and he could see it was a sham. Hell, anyone with a shiny white cane should have been able to see it, but here in La La Land we like a dirty angle. Proves the rest of ‘em aren’t so bad for how filthy they are.”

***

It was a clip that had been a fan- and then a news-favorite long before half the people in it were dead. Lilly had gotten ahold of one of the loose cams and was running around with it. She had held it out to catch her and Ronnie smiling—a sort of proto-selfie—and said, “Come one, sex it up , sister.” And Veronica had let her chin drop, her eyelids flutter, and her lips purse ever so slightly. As they both seduced the camera in a way only a teenager can. Until, of course, Duncan burst out laughing at the sight and he and Logan stole the camera in a blur of vertigo-inducing camera work.

***

“You’ve seen the clip before?”

“Oh yeah,” he told the lovely woman who had been asking him seemingly innocuous questions on and off for days.

“Do you remember that day?”

He shrugged. “It was everyday. Sets had been my life and at that point it was all we ever did. We went to school on set, we ate all our meals on set, we dated on set, we had sex on set, we slept on set. Half the time it felt like we had to get permission slips signed by the producers to even leave. Even to do publicity stuff like Ophelia or Helen. 

“What about _Queen Bees_?”

“That was a big deal but it was between the adults. The negotiating and the hemming and hawing about the schedule and other casting—we weren’t in on it and weren’t supposed to know anything about it. Lilly was just going to disappeared and reappear with no control and it pissed Lilly off. She pulled all kinds of things trying to get them into a corner so they’d have to deal with her.”

“What kinds of things?”

“The treadmill video. The tranny bar pictures. The shoulda-been-a-DUI.”

“All of those were intentional?”

“Oh yeah. I mean she would have made out with a trans guy anyway but making sure that the world saw it... that was planned. People like to beatify her, act-like she wasn’t just as messed up as she had every right to be with the lives we led, excuse a lot of the twisted shit she did.” He looked at the smiling, seemingly simple version of Lilly playing again on screen. “People act like the world was robbed of perfection, of a saint. Lilly was a bitch, okay? I get to remember that she was a bitch and miss her every day.” Logan heard how forceful his voice had gotten.

“Sorry. I guess I just get tired of the image people paint with that video, like her sexuality was an act and she was really just a sweet young girl. Lilly wasn’t peonies and lace. Lilly was leather and studs.”

“What about Veronica?”

Logan laughed. He watched the faux femme fatale the looped video showed. “Ronnie was peonies and lace. This video is who she was then. But with Lilly gone, with the world out to crucify the harlot putting Aaron Echols away she... she changed. Veronica... Veronica is an old leather jacket, worn but well-fit. Not showy or pretentious like some Italian couture leather bustiers.” He was smiling, thinking of the couture leather bustier Lilly had worn the the Emmys that last year while Veronica had been in a red satin gown that finally made her look her age.

Maybe, maybe if everything hadn’t gone to shit that’s who they would have become.


	4. Make you notice.

Hayward Meyer had been happy enough to see her at his table for the Press Club Dinner. He’d leered at her well-placed cleavage and apparently made plans for later—not that he’d told her those plans at them time.

He’d kept them to himself until after he’d T-boned her car and calmly and kindly filled her in while dragging her—concussed and bleeding—out by her hair. The things he had planned at the time, which he enumerated in detail, were also apparently off the table because once she was on the street he decided ribs were overrated and attempted to pulverize hers with his right foot. All this for the crime of finding enough evidence of his repeated sexual harassment of his cohosts to _finally_ get him fired. So what if it set off a chain of events that also ended with a divorce—hey, she’d had one of those; they weren’t so bad—being stripped of a Pulitzer, and having his name removed from a journalism award at his alma mater. She may have convinced said former cohosts to go public but it wasn’t like she or they made up the allegations. 

***

Logan laughed, “It was just a baby shark. You know? One of the small species, like yea big,” he held his hands a few feet apart.

“So you’re saying it didn’t have teeth?”

“Oh, come on. I’ve had worse scars from cats.”

“Do you have a lot of scars?”

“Yes?” he clasped his hands in front of him. “Please, oh please Lord, let this turn into the scene from _Lethal Weapon 3_.”

She laughed harder and said, “Other than the baby shark, your fans have cataloged quite a few.”

He fought the urge to waggle his eyebrows and dive headlong into the labyrinth. “I was kind of naked a lot for a while there.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I was drunk and high out of my mind?”

“Do you still get drunk and high out of your mind?”

 _I wish._ “I’ve been clean for a while now.”

“How long has it been?”

“Which time?”

“This one.”

“I’ve been clean for about two years now.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” he threw in hoping to derail the questions he knew were coming. 

“What happened two years ago?”

“A drunk doesn’t need a reason to get drunk.”

“So why did you stop getting drunk?”

Logan thought long and hard about a half truth. There were so many things he could have said that would have sent them down a different path. He could keep this secret, keep this image in his head to himself where he had a chance in hell of expunging it from existence. “Haywood Meyer.”

“How so?”

 _Lie. You’re a liar. Lie_ “I watched Aaron hit my mom more times than I could count—I couldn’t count very high back then. And then I watched as his fist came flying at me. When Veronica and I got married I told her that would never happen. I would never hit my wife, I would never hit my kid. Sure, I’d hit every other fucker out there but not her.” He shrugged, feeling as useless as a shrug was. “She got beat anyway.” He felt the helplessness and the fear turn into that old familiar rage. “He put her _in the hospital_. I was on my way to put him in the ground. I was going to beat him until the tiny pieces of his body decomposed into dirt.” He wanted to again. He wanted to find Meyer and pound him all over again.

“So why didn’t you?”

“A friend stopped me. Told me I should swing by the hospital and see Veronica before I creamed that fuck.”

“What happened at the hospital?”

He snorted a pitiful sound and scratched his head. “We got in a fight. As always. Nothing— It wasn’t like we took swings at each other. Hell, she could barely breath her ribs were so beat. Her head was still ringing from the crash. I don’t know how she had the energy to fight with me, but she did. She always, always does.”

“What did you fight about?”

“Protection. I wanted her to use some of that damn blood money for once and get some big beefy guy to stand between her and trouble for a change. She took exception.” He rubbed his forehead, her words still ringing in his ears. “Loudly. Really loudly for a person with a concussion.” 

“And after?”

He shrugged, “And we went back to our corners?”

“But you still didn’t go find Hayward Meyer.”

“I tried. I did my level best, but I was so drunk I couldn’t even make a fist—and that is saying something; I drunkenly struck many a smug look off an ugly face.”

“And with Veronica?”

Hands proffered to the air, he said, “You tell me.”

***

“Was Hayward Meyer the most dangerous criminal you’ve gone after?”

She shook her head, suddenly empathizing with Logan over his dislike of her “random,” interrogative questions. “Just the most… noticeable. He’d probably be back on television by now if he hadn’t been found guilty of assault and battery. Maybe that makes him the most rash.”

“Who was the most dangerous?”

“Aaron? He took the most from me so I guess he was my most dangerous but… Mercer… Woody… they were the most dangerous to others. They took a lot from everybody.”

“What did Aaron take from you?

Her spit of laughter was bitter. “My best friend, my brother, my childhood. My marriage. My—” She choked up and couldn’t say it, still couldn’t say it out loud. Instead she just tried to pull it all back in and push the tears down where they couldn’t belong to anybody else. 

“Your marriage?”

She nodded. “The first mistrial wasn’t surprising. All of the maneuvering his legal team was doing was all just to line up the best chance of an acquittal but when it happened— _God_ , we never thought it would happen—that was the beginning of the end. With Aaron free we had a clock over us and,” she shrugged, fatalistic, “it ran out.”

“How so?”

“There just… wasn’t anything left,” Veronica said feeling just as empty as her voice.


	5. The perfect sky is torn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Rereading the last few chapters I found them full of typos. They'll be getting an edit post. ;o)

“Why didn’t it work out?”

“What?” Logan asked, floundering. 

“Your marriage. Why didn’t it work out?”

Logan looked past the lights. “I guess we fought too much.”

“Interesting.” She was going enigmatic on him, and Logan wasn’t really in the mood to be led around by the short and curlies. 

“What are you talking about?”

“Veronica had a very different answer?”

“She talked to you about our marriage?” Because that did not sound like Veronica to him. Talked to them about how much she hated Aaron—amen, sister—about how much she wanted to decimate the women-abusing masses, but about them, the them they were for the one happy minute in all of the past seven years? Not by his watch.

“A bit.”

“What did she say?” He didn’t want to know. He knew her well enough that no full truth was going to have come out of her mouth for these people. But still, what had she been willing to say, how had she colored it?”

“She said that as soon as Aaron was acquitted there was a clock over your marriage and it just ran out. What do you have to say about that?”

He nodded looking in the middle distance, remembering the feel of her beneath his hands, remembering that glimpse of a future he hadn’t been allowed to have. “Yeah.”

“You agree with her?”

“It’s… it’s an explanation that makes sense.”

“So you blame your father for your marriage ending?”

“If he’d gone to prison like he should have,” Logan proffered, “for a series of crimes he committed the world would be a different place. Would Veronica and I still be married? I have no idea, but we wouldn’t have broken up then. So, yeah. Mine is yet another marriage my father’s egomaniaicism laid to waste.”

“I don’t think that’s a word,” she returned with narrowed eyes.

“Father? Me neither.”

“Egomaniaicism,” she clarified.

“Potato, patato.”

***

The _bonhomie_ would nauseate small, adorable animals were they forced to watch the publicity footage coming out of the _Moonlit_ junket. As it was Logan and Veronica stuck to the story their manager told them to sell like _Glengarry Glen Ross_ was on Broadway and then go to lunch and skip the afternoon while ordering a ridiculous amount of room service to their suite. As a result, they got a little too into character.

“Who wouldn’t just love this big galoot?” “She’s my snugglumpkins.” “You’re just the sweetest poopsie oopsie.” But the line that wouldn’t die was “Oh, of course I’m taking his name that way everyone can see we’re one soul.”

Cliff had returned with: “You’re in the Mudd now, kid. It’s Ronnie Echolls: ride or die. Huh,” their erstwhile manager said scratching his once dark head of hair, “you know with Americans’ tendency to elide you could just end up Ron-i-chols.”

Logan stifled a laugh and looked in the opposite direction of the man who was egging his soon to be wife into an apoplectic fit. “Cliff, what if we take this image overhaul opportunity to rebrand fully? You know get rid of the baby names. Like the Belsen Twins.”

“You know, Snugdiddliumpkins, I believe they prefer Krista and Anna Beth.” He couldn’t help smiling—a real one for the first time all weekend—at the scrunched nose growl she let curl in his face.

***

“So if Aaron’s acquittal is the end of your marriage, how did it begin?”

“We stood in front of an ordained justice and said words I feel you may have heard before.”

“That is to say, how did you and Logan get to that point? You’d been costars for a long time but dated other people then after Lilly’s passing—”

“Murder.”

“Yes, Lilly’s murder the animosity on set between you was well-known, and so many people were very surprised to see you two together. Some said they were equally surprised to see your characters break up after how long it took them to get together.”

“Both were a sham,” she said laughing bitterly. “The writers broke Bella and Doherty up because they had always intended to but with Sigourney out because Lilly was dead, Donne’s scene’s being cut right and left because Duncan was falling apart, and Aaron running off the rails to the point where any scene with him in it could go exactly as written or turn into an adlib fest they sped things up and spent half the show on the actors who could keep their shit together. That it was Logan and I was a coincidence. Anyway, none of it worked, the show tanked, and even people watching for the morbid curiosity factor wasn’t enough to keep us around until next season.” Having to snuggle with your ex-friend who has been telling everyone who’ll listen that you’re a slut who slept with your brother is…” She sighed. “They kept the relationship dangling with accidental kisses and broken embraces and longing looks because it was the only thing on the show that still worked. And they did not care at all what it was doing to Logan and I.”

“What did it do to you?”

“We were a mess. Lilly was dead and Duncan was trying to join her and the show we had grown up on was evaporating while my TV dad—and his real dad—was walking around like a crazy person who was actually getting away with murder. I don’t know what it was that broke the camel’s back, but one day he’s just sobbing in my arms. We didn’t talk about it—at all—and the next week he punches Dick in the face for insulting me.”

“The story in _Us Weekly_? That was real?”

“It was beautiful.” She laughed, still loving the shock on Dick’s face as the fist of his best friend flew towards him.

“So how did you end up married?”

“My manager… _our_ manager at that point—Big Dick had embezzled all his kids’ money and run—was trying to save our careers. By the time the show was canceled and Aaron was arrested—my step-father and Mom too—there was not a lot keeping our careers alive and Cliff thought we could swing it: a bait and switch. Distract everyone from the sinking, flaming ship around us by convincing them we were just so darn tootin’ in love,” she gave a campy fist pump, “that none of the rest of the mess mattered. Convince the public that we were still their sweethearts and that would keep the networks calling.”

“Wait… you’re saying…”

“The marriage was a lie, a Hollywood lie but a lie. The ceremony and certificate were real enough, legal, but there was no epic romance getting us down that isle. And at that point everything else around us had been a lie for so long and we didn’t even know that it seemed like the safest bet. Our manager had this whole plan. Prove we were still viable, capitalize on the Bella-Doherty chemistry, and get a show of our own. He wanted to call it _Man on Mars_ ,” she quipped looking towards the heavens. “God Cliff… he was like a puppy with a bone; try saying no to that face… And he was the only person in Hollywood we trusted. Him and my dad.”

“You still trusted Jake Kane?”

“No. Jake had been like my father for a long time. He’d been a decent step-father and he didn’t have to be, but he’d tampered with evidence and Lilly’s killer got away with it twice because of him so no.”

“So who are you talking about?”

“Keith Mars was always my dad, he was the only person who always listened to me when I said something else was going on with Lilly’s murder. He helped me solve it. Without him, without Logan, we never would have gotten Aaron.”

“A jury of his peers found Aaron Echolls innocent.”

“A jur—” Veronica had to curtail the urge to spit. “That trial was a mockery. They’d plastered the airwaves, newspapers, billboards for months with half a dozen alternative stories to sew as much doubt as possible and traded on his fame and slung dirt on everyone but him. That wasn’t a fair trial, it was a circus. Aaron killed Lilly Kane. I knew he did, and that night in the hills he confessed.”

“Even after those events there is a base of people who don’t believe Aaron Echolls killed Lilly Kane.”

“They want to believe planted evidence and ginned up lies because it makes them feel better then so be it but I was there. I know what I saw, I know what he said, and I know what I did and did not consent to.” She felt that old familiar rage curl through her. Remember the two faces Aaron wore in her nightmares, the fatherly mentor and the depraved murderer. “It’s hard to see your heroes as real people with flaws and warts and atrocities to their names until you’re one of the survivors of their deeds.”

***

“Several people have credited her with being an early precursor to the #MeToo movement. What do you think about that?”

“It’s not about that. She doesn’t go after these parasites because of #MeToo. She goes after them because of #Me. Well, #Her. She lived this problem in Hollywood before she had her period. She buried her best friend and watched the murderer and her own abusers walk all while throwing her and her career in the mud. And they got to keep raking in the money? This has been about righting that wrong, about keeping others from going through it for a long time now. So the rest of Hollywood caught up. But where the fuck have they been? They were all just fine with her being trampled when it was happening. Nobody was wearing black to the Oscars, they were showing up at his trial as character witnesses.”


	6. You can get into debt on your own.

“Tell me about _Man on Mars_.”

“Wha— Where’d you hear about that?” He tore his eyes from her, getting over the mild stupefaction, looking past the lights. “Clifford Marie McCormack, you get your cardboard butt out here.” He looked around, sure it was only a matter of comedic beats before his once-manager stepped forward hands in the air and an excuse about a pretty woman on his lips. “Seriously, is he bound and gagged somewhere?”

The woman who had gotten to know him well—if not vice versa—smiled. “We didn’t hear about it from Cliff McCormack.”

He blinked once, twice before finally closing his mouth. “Are you torturing her? Is there a truth serum I don’t know about that works on the Mars DNA? I think I might need to see some film to make sure you aren’t holding a unicorn at gunpoint to get her to talk. …or something.”

“I can’t show you the film, but I can tell you she told us about McCormack’s plan to save your careers.”

“She told you about why we got married.”

“She said it was a lie.”

“The romance, the engagement were lies. The marriage was real. Legally binding and everything; I’ve got the divorce attorney bill to prove it. We weren’t pretending to live together and dating other people, or waiting the prescribed amount of time before we could break it up. It was the only time I ever intended to be married and I can’t speak for Veronica but I’m still not really happy it ended. So…” his brain caught up with his mouth. He sighed. “Don’t supposed we can strike that last bit from the record,” he said with his eyes closed.

“If you didn’t want the marriage to end, why did it?”

“Didn’t think so,” he muttered and sighed before opening his eyes and looking back at the camera. “It takes two to want a marriage to work. If my mom had lit out she’d still be alive. Veronica’s parents split when she was six. Lilly’s too. And I don’t think it was Celeste Kane or Keith Mars’s ideas. I was in it. Veronica wanted out and, given,” he waved his hand around trying to encompass the unspeakable about their lives and their marriage, “I didn’t really think I had anything she wanted anyway.”

“What did Veronica want?”

“Besides Lilly’s killer brought to justice, I don’t really know.”

“Her career?”

He shook his head. “It was never really _her_ career. Lianne wanted her to be special, to be a star, and she had the Kane money and connections to make it happen. Lilly wanted it to spend time with her favorite member of the family and to get under her mother’s skin.”

“Did it?”

“Oh yeah. If you dig I am sure you can find some injunctions or something Celeste Kane filed to try and keep Lilly out of the spotlight. She wanted Lilly to be perfect and since Lilly thought that was ridiculous Celeste wanted her hidden. Well, we have all seen what Lilly thought of those kind of expectations.”

“So you’re saying a lot of the persona was there to upset her mother, Celeste Kane?”

“Not really. Sometimes the way she did things would be. That pap she dated, she’d have done that but she wouldn’t have made it public if it hadn’t been for Celeste trying to set her up with some boy genius. She wasn’t the celibate type, but it wasn’t like every relationship or one night stand made it to the papers. She knew what she was doing.”

“How did those other relationships effect you?”

“There were times when we were supposed to be together that I—” he struggled with how to explain his hormone driven emptions. “I was pretty hurt. I think I said before Lilly could be a real bitch. We worked it out mostly. Before she died we’d come to a place where a lot of our relationship was for the cameras. We were still close, we loved each other, but I don’t think Lilly was built to be a one-person woman. I think the world doesn’t understand that about her. That’s where the angel or slut thing comes from. She wasn’t sleeping around, she wasn’t sexualized to young, she was just having sex with people she wanted to have sex with. She was safe and she was happy and I think that confuses people. She didn’t have to be in love with Aaron to have slept with him. And, okay, yeah, her sleeping with him hurt, but it didn’t make her a slut. Personally, I think what he did in sleeping with her was a lot more messed up. And that’s not even the worst think I know about my dad’s sex life so cheers and thanks for asking.”

“What about you? Are you a one-person kind of man?”

“You mean not like Aaron? I tried not to be. I slept with a bunch of different people and… Yeah, I guess I am. I am a one-person kind of guy.”

“What’s Veronica?”

“I don’t know. I thought she was the one-person kind but,” he shook his head. “Maybe she’s not; maybe she’s the no-person kind.”

“You sound sad.”

He nodded.

***

The flashes blinked and fritzed around them with their make-up and jewelry winking back in the lights, flirting with the cameras and the people behind them. The girls laughed and turned to their good sides, facing each other and tilting for favorable angles. The paparazzi called their names over and over like varied ocean waves: “Veronica!” “Veronica!” “Lilly!” “Veronica!” “Lilly!” “Lilly!” “Veronica!” “Lilly!” “Veronica!” “Lilly!” “Veronica!” “Veronica!” “Veronica!” “Veronica!” “Lilly!” “Veronica!” “Lilly!” “Lilly!” “Veronica!” As though one shouter was distinguishable from another. 

After a couple minutes calls turned to questions, half of them unintelligible and ignored beyond a laugh or saucy eye roll until: “Lilly! Who are you taking to the Emmy’s? Logan? Dick? James?”

“Those boys? _Please!_ ” she called back to them waving away their suggestions and turning towards Veronica.

“Then who?” and a chorus of “Lilly!” returned.

She smirked and glanced into half the cameras in a roll towards her step-sister’s face, “You know,” she started, eyeing Veronica out of the corner of her lashes, “Veronica and I aren’t _actually_ sisters.” Lilly lipped a soft slow kiss onto Veronica’s deeply blushing cheek before the younger girl could gather herself to push Lilly away, scandalized with good-natured affront.

Lilly for her part laughed as she dragged Veronica out of the scrum and past the rest of the waiting cameras with interviewers.

***

“Is it true Taminee Bly asked you to get evidence on Jimmy Watts after he called her a liar for accusing him?” And the winner for out-fielding questions is… the Nameless Interview Lady!

“Who cares? Also, as a licensed investigator there is such a thing as privileged information. You want the answer, you’re going to have to be a judge or find some way to subpoena me. That said, Jimmy Watts first put his hand up my skirt when I was fourteen… at my parents’ house… during a party they were throwing… for a _presidential candidate_. So he can moan all he wants, but I would believe Taminee Bly way before I’d believe Jimmy Watts.”

“Did that happen a lot?”

“Did Jimmy Watts put his hand up my skirt a lot? About four times too many. Although, after the last time he tried it with me my guess is he won’t again.” 

“What was different about that time?”

“Let’s just say I put my hand up his skirt too. …only in mine was a Taser. Meh,” she said, shrugging with her hands up.

“Did other people try to put their hands up your skirt or touch other similarly intentioned parts of you?” And Veronica has to give her credit for keeping it PG.

“Duh.”

“Please elaborate.”

“Okay, look. When I was first in front of the cameras my mom was always just outside the frame, so nobody was going to do anything egregious. However, they were still always touching me. My hair, my clothes, my face, my body. They moved me and twisted me and pushed me and I can’t even tell you the first time I heard a tech say, ‘put this stuff animal in her lap, or we’re going to get tagged for kiddie porn.’” She sighed. Let it sit a moment. “There is a certain amount of commodification of your body that is just part and parcel of modeling and acting—male or female. It is sales and advertising. Doesn’t mean I agree with the gender norms for both men and women they’re selling, but it’s part of the deal. You don’t like it then start an indie and make movies where you can tell yourself you’re not doing that. You still are; it’s just an ad campaign with wider appeal.”

“That’s pretty cynical.”

“It’s realistic. And when that is the world you live in it is a small jump from ‘No, honey put your legs like this’ to ‘Oh, honey put your legs in my lap.’”

Even the interviewer finally got quite. There was no immediate question. For a second Veronica wondered if the day would be over and she’d be told to calm down because she got too confrontational, too real and not salaciously. 

Then a soft voice, quite in the silence, asked, “How do you feel about being touched now?”

“Not great, _surprisingly_ ,” she said with an audible roll of her eyes.

“Is that why you stopped acting?”

“No, I stopped acting because people in Hollywood are J-holes. After a while my barometer for acceptable, normal touch recalibrated and personal space is addicting.” She couldn’t withhold the glare she sent the hair and make-up artist off to the side. 

“So how do you handle the people in your life who want to touch you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your father? Your friends? You know we interview Wallace Fennell.” Veronica nodded. “He cares about you a lot—”

“He better! I saved his punk ass.”

“Do they get to touch you… to hug you, comfort you?”

“Yes?” Veronica tried to shake off the heebbie jeebies brought on by the image of Wallace touching her the way Hollywood had always touched her. “It’s not like I hate touch. Wallace, Dad, they’re just showing affection. They’re not touching me to commodify me; I’m not an object to them. I’m a person. Really a real person.”

“Did your parents—Lianne and Jake—did they touch you like an object?”

“Not most of the time.” She considered for a second the frequent once-overs and adjustments before she left the house or while they were out shopping or even just moving from one form of transit to another. “To Mom and Jake they were just helping my career by fixing my hair or my clothes, it wasn’t… creepy.”

“What about your step-siblings?”

“Lilly could cross a line,” she laughed. “But she was my sister. If she goosed a boob to give me optimum cleavage it wasn’t about how fleshy my boobs were or selling the big-boobed starlet it was to show me I was… _sexy_. Not in the bows and pleated skirts way the producers wanted but in the ‘You’re red satin, Veronica’ way. Lilly wanted me to feel in control of my image, not controlled.” _God,_ Veronica missed her. “She never got to see me that way.” Veronica could feel the tears welling up. “It took losing her to break that pattern and show me I could stop caring, stop listening, stop letting the little transgressions go, and just…” a vision of an explosion filled Veronica’s head. “It was kind of freeing. But if the trade was be free or be with Lilly…” Veronica felt the tears roll down her face and no matter how hard she rolled her eyes or willed them back they just wouldn’t evaporate.


End file.
